It's Patent
by owlcroft
Summary: A short discussion of the obligations of friendship.


A/N: A response to the Friendship Day Challenge.

IT'S PATENT

by

Owlcroft

Hardcastle didn't even flinch when the screen door slammed shut. "You got the mail?" he called out.

"Yeah." McCormick stepped down into the den, thumbing through the envelopes. "Lotta bills, some junk mail. Hey, here's one from Barb!" He tossed the rest of the day's post onto the judge's desk and plopped into his chair, ripping open the envelope with the New York postmark.

The judge sighed, shook his head, then shoved the newly-arrived mail off the court transcript he'd been studying. "How's she doing? She picked an area of law yet?"

Mark skimmed the first page of the letter. "Huh. Yeah. She's going into patent law." He looked up, cocked his head in thought. "That makes sense. Considering what was going on with Flip and Martin Cody, I mean."

"Does make sense. Patent law's no walk in the park, though." Hardcastle leaned back in his chair and looked across the den. "I knew a coupla guys who went into patent. One of 'em switched over to tax law after about a year."

"_Tax _law?" McCormick shuddered delicately. "No _way_."

Hardcastle nodded in agreement. "No kidding. You gotta have a special kind of mind for tax law." He sniffed idly, then asked, "What else she say?"

"Hey, she's coming out here! For spring break. That's great!" Mark glanced up at the judge. "Can we have her over for dinner or something while she's here? She'll be out here for a week, she says."

"Sure. I'd like to see her again. We can do something special, maybe a prime rib or ... I know. Ham with cloves." The judge went back to his transcript with a certain air of nonchalance, only breaking into a grin at McCormick's snorted laughter.

"Yeah, or liver and onions. With cloves." Mark quickly finished up the letter from Barb Johnson, then hopped to his feet. "I'll give her a call, set things up."

The judge nodded, said, "You know--," then stopped abruptly.

McCormick looked at him, puzzled. "What?"

"Nothing. Go on, give her a call. Hey, ask her if she needs a place to stay. Plenty of room here." The judge waved a hand and picked up the transcript again.

"Judge, I know you. You were gonna say something. What?" Mark perched on the arm of his chair and waited patiently.

After only a moment or two, Hardcastle shrugged and set the transcript back down. He swiped a hand across his nose, glanced at McCormick and then away, and said, "I just wondered if you'd steal the Coyote again."

McCormick looked at him with lowered brows and a puzzled expression. "You mean if I went back in a time machine and could do it all over again? Sure I would." He gestured at the den, then at the judge himself. "Things ended up pretty good, don't you think?"

"That's not exactly what I meant." Hardcastle rested an elbow on the desk surface, then leaned his cheek against his palm. "I mean, if you didn't know what was gonna happen, if you knew there was a real good chance you'd end up back in the slammer for a long time. You took a real risk, ya know. It was a real _dumb _thing to do."

"Yeah, but I didn't know there was a Lone Ranger judge out there that we could come to for help." Mark slid into the seat of the chair, tossing Barb's letter onto the corner of the desk. "Barb said she'd tried to get people involved and nobody wanted to hear it. The way she saw it, there wasn't anything else to do."

Hardcastle held up a palm. "But what I mean is ..." He dropped the hand onto his desk. "Hell, I don't know. Look, okay, a friend of yours had been killed and you believed, rightly, that he'd been murdered by this guy. Okay, I can see you'd want to do something about it, but stealing the car? What kinda sense does that make?"

"He was my _friend_. I had to do _something,_" McCormick said quietly. "Maybe it was dumb. Yeah, sure, it was dumb, it was stupid. But it was something that would hurt Cody and that's all I was thinking about."

"You weren't thinking about all those years in a cell? About a nice reunion with guys named Crusher and Mauler and Chainsaw?" The judge shook his head. "You're not that stupid."

Mark sat for a moment, biting his lip and remembering, then said slowly, "I thought about it, I really did, Judge. But you know what decided me? I thought about trying to live with myself if I didn't do anything. I thought about how I'd feel guilty every single day. About how I'd have to remember I'd let Flip down, I'd let Barbara down. That I'd turned my back on the one guy who'd never turned his back on me. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't see living with that." He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. "That's not what friendship is. You don't _do _that to a friend."

The judge pushed out his lower lip and hmm'ed. "You make sacrifices for friends, sure. But there's a limit. You don't go out and break the law just because--"

"Yes, you do! When the law lets you down, or gets in the way, you do!" McCormick faced Hardcastle and a slight tinge of humor seeped into his grim expression. "'Flagrant necessity' ring a bell for you?"

Hardcastle sighed. "Mighta known you were never gonna forget that," he muttered.

"But, Judge, look." Mark paused, marshalling his thoughts. "I never had a lot of friends. Some guys in high school, and look how _they _turned out. Then I met Flip and I found out what friendship really is. He was always there for me. He backed me up no matter what, he helped me out in so many ways ... He wrote to me in prison, you know. He and Barb were still in Florida, but they sent letters and postcards every month." He turned away abruptly and walked over to the west window. "Barb said Flip cried when I went to prison. She told me that right before she asked me to steal the Coyote." He turned back. "How could I say 'no' to her, to Flip?"

"Okay, yeah, well," Hardcastle scratched his jaw and thought. "I can understand what you were feeling, and I can sympathize with the position she put you in. But, still. That's a mighty big risk and a mighty big sacrifice just for revenge."

Mark nodded. "But I would've done anything for Flip. He was the first real friend I ever had. And besides, it was good practice." He grinned at the judge's quizzical expression. "Stealing a car for a friend's nothing compared to breaking one out of jail or committing assault or stealing files."

"Now, look. You know damn well you never shoulda done _any _of that! The one thing I wanted you to learn is to let the law take its course. And don't give me any more of that 'flagrant necessity' stuff, either." The judge huffed a bit and subsided.

McCormick smiled at him. "Yeah, I know. But I also know you feel the same way I do about friendship. It's a commitment, a responsibility. I know you'd do anything for a friend, including breaking the law at times." He picked up Barbara's letter again. "So, would I do the same thing again? Absolutely. Once you have a real friend, a _best _friend _ever_, you don't give that up."

Hardcastle studied the surface of his desk. "So stealing the car was worth it, as a kind of revenge for your best friend ever, huh?"

"Nah." Mark tucked his letter into the back pocket of his jeans. "It was worth it as a tribute to Flip's memory and because it was my first 'flagrant necessity'. Friendship means sacrifices sometimes, Judge, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for my best friend ever. I'd even," he took a deep breath, "go into tax law."

Still staring at the top of the desk, Hardcastle quirked a tiny smile and replied, "There's not enough 'flagrant necessity' in the world for _that_."

finis


End file.
